The explosion of e-commerce through the Internet has raised issues that are essentially business issues that did not need to be addressed prior to the explosion of e-commerce. A situation now exists, for example, in a business-to-business environment, as well as in other environments, such as a business-to-consumer environment or even the reverse case of a consumer-to-business environment, in which the parties simply have had no prior contact and there is neither a business nor credit history between trading partners. The Internet creates an environment in which the physical location nature of businesses becomes transparent. In other words, they become virtual businesses. The buyers and/or sellers can be anywhere in the world, so the physical nature of business transactions is effectively disrupted. There is a present need to alleviate at least some of the issues that make e-commerce business among strangers less uncertain.